Sport works as a metaphor for pretty much anything; the struggle of living, the folly or the transcendence of hope, the sense that people acting in concert can achieve far more that they can as individuals.

But the development of a soccer team works particularly well as a metaphor for the process of evolution.

Imagine a newly appointed coach (let’s call him Carl) who believes he knows the best way for his team to play. He’s studied the players, assessed the other teams in the league and decided that not only does one particular formation suit this team, but that he also knows the players who will best fit that formation.

He is following a system (an “intelligent design” if you will).

The first game of the season only intensifies his belief that he has got things right. Maybe the absolute best players weren’t in the absolute best positions but no matter because, as the season progresses, the design can be perfected with the odd switch here and the occasional modification there.

Then reality takes hold.

The system doesn’t work quite so well in the next game as one of Carl’s first choice midfielders makes a game changing mistake and looks to be off the pace quite badly.

On the other side of the ledger one of the forwards that Carl thought would be a reserve is actually playing better than one of the forwards that he assumed would be a certain starter.

In the next game that same midfielder plays poorly again and, to accommodate the forward who has been playing well, Carl plays him slightly out of position which means he doesn’t play quite so well.

Carl’s “design” is starting to fall prey to the chaos of nature.

Before the fourth game Carl discovers that one of his midfielders has fallen over a bike rack and suffered from concussion so, in an attempt to reclaim some kind of control, he changes his favoured formation completely and it seems to work as his team earn their second win of the season.

Carl opts for no change at all for the fifth game and all seems to be going swimmingly until the equivalent of a dinosaur extinguishing meteor hits his team when his best defensive midfielder tries to win a Darwin Award by getting sent off for the dumbest of reasons. The team crumble and lose their first game of the season.

For the sixth game Carl goes back to basics in terms of formation, but plays the mad scientist in terms of player selection as he gambles on youth and speed to achieve the desired result.

And it almost works (except it doesn’t) and Carl is left with the feeling that, once again, he knows the best formation for this team if not the best players to play in that formation.

So, as we wait of the next act in this drama, it would do us well to remember that evolution is not a linear process and that “survival of the fittest” is a misnomer that would be better expressed as “survival of the fortunate and the random”.

We are all so much strands of DNA thrown into a soup of atomic chaos rather than the apex of natural selection we often take ourselves to be.

And, fortunately, soccer teams can often be the same.

A freak injury that seems disastrous at the time can force a young player to find his natural role, an average performer on the training field can find unexpected inspiration when paired with a senior pro in the heat of competition, the formation that makes no sense on paper suddenly looks to be the work of the Gods on grass (or even turf).

I guess what I’m saying with all of this is that Carl Robinson’s seeming certainty at the start of the season was bound to be found wanting when faced with the heat of the real world of Major League Soccer, but he and his coaching staff need to be given the time and space to play with their creations to see what evolves.

Whether they will end up with the equivalent of a creature that sees wonder in the stars and magic in the oceans, or the equivalent of an unlamented flightless bird is something we will discover in time.

What they will end up with though, without a doubt, is a metaphor for something.

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